Mel Glazer, Turned Shop Into Haberdashery Institution, 74

[DGH]

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Melvin Glazer, who built his family's hat business in Lowell into a New
England institution and taught business courses at area colleges later in
life, died Tuesday, November 19, 2002, at Saints Memorial Medical Center in
Lowell, Masachusetts, after a long struggle with lung cancer, at the age
of74.

For decades, Mr. Glazer, known as Mel, owned and operated the Parrot Hat
Shop on Middlesex Street, a business started in 1923 by his father, Samuel,
and where Mr. Glazer learned the trade as a boy.

He closed the shop in 1997 and retired.

At the time, the Lowell City Council presented Mr. Glazer with the key to
the city. ''Mel was very well respected in Lowell and Greater Lowell,' the
city's former mayor Edward ''Bud'' Caulfield said by phone yesterday.

''The Parrot Hat Shop had been in business all those years through thick and
thin and Mel stayed the course. He loved Lowell and he loved his customers.
When you walked out of his store you had not only bought a hat, you had made
a friend,'' said Caulfield, now a Lowell city councilor. ''In fact, I am
wearing a Kangol hat I bought there right now.''

Parrot Hat got its name from the brand of hats both Mr. Glazer and his
father made by hand in earlier days, which had the motto, ''Parrot Hat: It
speaks for itself.''

The shop's clientele, who appreciated both the perfection and style of its
hats, came from all over New England and beyond. Many of them were regulars,
and many special-ordered hats for Mr. Glazer to craft by hand.

Among them, said Libbie Glazer, Mr. Glazer's wife, was former Boston City
Councilor Albert L. ''Dapper'' O'Neil. ''Dapper always bought Italian
Borsalinos,'' she said.

She also remembered that the customers included a former Massachusetts
governor, Endicott ''Chub'' Peabody, his wife, Toni, and radio personality
Jerry Williams.

At Parrot Hat there was no end to variety. It had fedoras, homburgs,
derbies, Stetsons, cowboy hats, women's theatrical hats with feathers,
baseball caps with sequins and rhinestones, deer-stalker hats, and rain
hats.

Mr. Glazer himself always wore a hat - all styles, his wife said, but he
seemed to favor a fedora with a small brim.

At first Parrot Hat was called Boston Hat, so named by Mr. Glazer's father,
who worked for a capmaker in Boston when he first arrived from Lithuania,
according to Mr. Glazer's son, Hugh Glazer of Marblehead.

Under both names, the shop was located at two different sites on Lowell's
Middlesex Street. In January 1977, its first building at number 94 was
destroyed by a fire that was ignited by a vagrant in an adjacent alleyway,
Libbie Glazer said. All the company's sewing machines and its tools for
hand-making hats were lost.

The shop reopened across the street, but Mr. Glazer gave up making the hats
by hand, Hugh Glazer said. Instead, his father carefully selected hats made
elsewhere that were as near as possible to his high standard.

''Theirs had been a very much roll-up-your-sleeves business,'' Glazer said
of his father and grandfather. ''Felt hat manufacturing was very hard work.
You were dealing with heavy blocks of wood, steaming equipment, and irons.''
Even after Mr. Glazer was able to hire a small staff to do most of the heavy
lifting, his son said, he ''still did all the fine finishing.''

Libbie (Fleet) Glazer worked in the shop with her husband for 25 years. They
met at a dance at the Young Men's Hebrew Association in Lowell just as Mr.
Glazer was being discharged from the Army during the Korean War. They would
have observed their 50th wedding anniversary in May.

Mr. Glazer's two children also had worked at Parrot Hat.

The Glazers' daughter, Ruth White of Tyngsborough, remembered the times she
worked there on Saturdays and during school vacations as some of the
happiest in her life. `'It was the biggest thrill for me to put the awning
down in front, to empty the ashtrays, and to do window-dressing.

''On Saturdays, Dad would take me to Pieke's pharmacy nearby for ice cream
sodas, and when he started to sell brands other than his own, he would take
me on buying trips. He always treated my opinions equal to his.''

Arthur Melvin Glazer was born in Lowell and graduated from Lowell High
School in 1944 and from Boston University, with a degree in business
administration, in 1948.

After college, Mr. Glazer worked full-time in the hat shop before going into
the Army and again after his discharge in 1953. He was already married and
the father of small children when he enrolled in night classes at
Northeastern University and earned a master's degree in business
administration in 1969, while continuing to work with his wife at their hat
shop.

Degree in hand, Mr. Glazer became an associate professor of business at some
of the area's community colleges, and for 10 years was a member of the
faculty of Rivier College in Nashua.

Sister Theresa Lawrence, professor emeritus of Rivier's business department,
said: ''Mel was very generous with his time and knowledge. His experience in
actually running a business made a big difference.''

After he retired, Mr. Glazer volunteered to teach finance and money to grade
school children at Lowell's Washington School and would take them on field
trips to banks. He also did volunteer work with the Merrimack Valley Elder
Services.

Mr. Glazer loved music and the arts, his daughter said, especially jazz and
opera. He and his wife were patrons of the Boston Lyric Opera and early
subscribers to the Merrimack Repertory Theater.

Even through the 21/2 years of his final illness, friends said, Mr. Glazer
continued his work in the community and on committees at Temple Beth El in
Lowell, where he had celebrated his bar-mitzvah.

''Up until very recently, Mel continued to attend bank meetings,'' said
James B. Hogan, president and CEO of Washington Savings Bank. Mr. Glazer had
been a corporator of the bank since 1958, a trustee since 1971 and for many
years was chairman of the board's audit committee.

Some 20 years ago, Mr. Glazer joined the Executive Health Club at the Lowell
Boys Club and met three other men who bonded in friendship. In addition to
their three-times-a-week workouts, they met for breakfast every second
Wednesday of the month for two decades.

''I was the oldest,'' said Norman Sheldon, 81, of Littleton, a retired
electronics engineer. ''Mel had a very good sense of humor. I remember one
St. Patrick's Day when the four of us were going out to celebrate, Mel was
the designated driver and showed up in a complete chauffeur's uniform.''

Boston Globe

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